


late nights, not you

by orphan_account



Series: could've been [5]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Jjbek, M/M, a short piece that actually has skating in it, the last part, what jj decides to do i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-29 07:16:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15724581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Usually the thing weighing on his mind at this time is the mass of the medal that might be in his hands by tomorrow, but not so tonight.





	late nights, not you

It was like this, he thought, after: as if you were falling and could look down the thrilling distance past your toes and see where you were most certainly going to land. As if this, and as if your parachute was too big, so you seemed to hang in the sky when, damn it all, you wanted a crash landing, if only to arrive there faster.

It’s for his own good he held himself back, but then, how is it he’s ended up where he never intended to? Surely it’s where he’s meant to be, but it doesn’t feel like home, or a job well-done. No matter how many people applaud every step he takes, he can’t seem to perceive the noise where it might make a difference, where he might believe it. And now, well, his ring’s missing as well as hers, so they might pause their clamor.

He has thought, and now, renewed again, he thinks, about the promise. (Not that one. The _other_ one.) He has never been quite sure what it meant; the sudden thought that Otabek might even have a better idea than he did (of what it should mean, and therefore, of what he’d _make_ it mean) only made it harder to text the question over the Atlantic. So he never did.

Making a different promise, set in precious metal, seemed a good method to roll the other away and out of his mental frame. Fighting an uphill battle the whole way, though, means it’s returned to torment him. It’s come back with all the momentum he mustered to push it off, and battered and clattered through his well-arranged life.

He held himself back. It was better for him, by the book he lived by, even if he didn’t know the reasoning (higher than his own). But this is what he gets now? Frustrated to feel so ungrateful, he wrestles the digging emotion which he rarely has to face otherwise.

See, he knows he’s got to be strong, and when he left the café with Bella that day a couple weeks ago, he felt like he could do it, he could be honest no matter the outcome. But the surge of confidence faded too soon, replaced by hours at the rink and the request to his parents and friends and fans to just give him some space. The only people happy with his recent change of lifestyle are his coach and land trainer and choreographer. Well, at least someone’s happy, and at least his jumps are clean and high and his step sequences are as smooth as a poem you’ve recited since childhood.

Rings a bell: last time he was spending too much time at the rink, last time he wasn’t sleeping much – but then, Bella was there (there to take the ring off her hand and give it back to him).

The door’s long been closed, and he’s long been lying in the dark before he manages to fall asleep, _Pink in the Night_ three-quarters of the way through softly playing on his phone by the hotel bed: _try again, try again, try again._

Usually the thing weighing on his mind at this time is the mass of the medal that might be in his hands by tomorrow, but not so tonight.

 ………………………………………..

 

If you’re an artist, you always have something you’re working on in your off time. Something on the side. Usually that’s the thing that means the most to you, too, something you don’t have to do for anyone else’s stamp of approval: it might be useless, and if it is, you certainly know it. But you keep doing it anyways.

JJ has a routine on the side. Maybe it’s a sign of maturity that over the years he’s toned down the extent to which he tries to force his vision, his style, on his coaches (because, after all, he _does_ want to win and you gotta follow the rulebook to win), and kept those most intense flights of his own imagination out of anyone’s sight.

Even Bella. Well, she’s seen him skating it when she comes rinkside, overtime from his actual training sessions, because she knows he’ll still be there anyway: she’ll ask him (or she would have, because they’re _done_ now), _what’s that you’re practicing? Adding something extra?_ and JJ would just say, _nah, something on the side,_ and no more questions, because every artist has something-on-the-side.

Has JJ ever truly fooled himself into thinking it wasn’t about Otabek in some way?

Sometimes if he looks at the harsh arcs his skate blades have cut, and the fluffy filaments of ice scattered about, and if he keeps the music just loud enough so he can keep his focus solely on his free leg or quad lutz: he won’t think about it, but he knows anyway.

Now he wonders if the self-made program was a covenant to keep himself from falling this way, or if it was the only way he’d let himself push against the vow he’d made.

Oh, and by the way, he’s still managed to take gold (Yuri Plisetsky is out on an ankle injury and the other Yuri isn’t in the Cup with him this time, so maybe he’s got those factors to thank), and he’s still managed to impress his fans, and perhaps assure even his family that’s he’s doing alright. By the way, his name is still securely in lights and he still smiles for the camera. He can’t help it. But by the way, inside, he’s still questionably miserable, some kind of seemingly static emotion that should push him either way but won’t.

(Otabek took silver and stood beside him on the podium. It doesn’t make him happy and it doesn’t make him sad.)

After all, JJ’s well-acquainted to many, but only true friends with some: no one would know what the program could mean for sure, it would be a surprise, a _good_ surprise, he thinks as he’s showering after stretching and cooldown.

But then he thinks after he’s had dinner and he’s back in his room, alone, _so alone_ , that maybe there’s still a line he has to walk, and it’s been written out for him (chided against being one of those _only-on-Sunday_ people). Bella _did_ tell him to talk to God. Thing is, he can talk all he wants, but he’s bad at listening, so all he’s got is the Book to go on. And it tells him where the line is. Where he can’t go.

It doesn’t say he doesn’t have to suffer for it, though, and it doesn’t say he can’t damn well skate about it, in the end.

Maybe this is how he can get it out of his system. (He’s confessed everything he did but here he is wanting to do it again.) Maybe he’ll be better off alone.

………………………………………..

He does it himself, switches the track. They’d rather have it from his coach but in the end there are no questions to ruin his momentum.

The costume he originally had for the exhibition skate was black pants and undershirt with a long red-and-gold jacket overtop, and a gold sash with blue accents looping over a shoulder and ending in free, square-ended sashes.

It’s not authentic anymore.

The jacket and sash come off at rinkside and he’s striding out onto the ice, spotlight searching for him, with the calls of his coach ignored. He knows his parents aren’t in the crowd: Natasha has her graduation today and they had to fly back. Otabek already skated, so who knows where he is, but JJ didn’t watch. No, JJ has a one-track mind right now, in quite a literal sense.

He’s just a slight touch cool because of the half-length sleeves, but that’ll change soon. He takes his starting pose; the spotlight’s a cool blue; the rink’s a stage for exhibition skates. Just black pants and black shirt and black skates and black gloves and black hair.

It's a Lauv cover, the track, with strident strings that sometimes crescendo in a multitude and sometimes quiet to leave only vocals. There are smooth synths that hold low tension, sometimes dissonant, and sometimes peacefully flow in harmony. Vocals cover the verses but leave the chorus to instrumentals.

It doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it’s not the happy sort of thing JJ usually keeps his exhibition skates to. It’s not a celebration or victory march, not a party in any way. It tells a story. Every step JJ wrote himself, and the memory is in every limb. Watching, you’d get the feeling it’s simple if only you understood it. There are no plot twists.

When JJ finishes through the last spin and small step sequence, and the music stops and fades, there seems to be a lurch in the applause: but applause there is. He bows to one side, pivots around, to the other; it seems they enjoyed the program, not that he really cares, this time around.

There’s a sense of relief as he steps off the ice and his coach passes him skate guards along with questions. JJ only smiles.

What will come of this? Who might understand what it all means? Everything seems clearer, out of his head and left on the ice: JJ knows he’ll never be better off alone; he knows he needs _someone_ or _something_ to make him whole.

But if he has to spend his whole life like this, then so be it. At least he’ll have a story to tell. He has the sense he’s on a journey, and maybe it’s good to move past being comfortable with being uncomfortable, even if he can’t move far.

If he has to spend his whole life like this:

but when he glances back, leaving rinkside, across the ice in the stands someone catches his eye from too far away to say it is some accident. Thin yellow stripe on white-and-blue jacket gleams briefly as he turns after some moments.

JJ’s told his story. His job is done. He’s set his course to land as well as he can see fit, and it’s up to anyone else (someone else) if something should happen otherwise.

 


End file.
